I really do – a commitment to writing

I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer. I start out with a character and a few sentences, and then I see where the story takes me. It’s worked out okay. I have a few short stories and hundreds of poems.

The poems are easier. Less than a few hundred words in a poem. And I can spend days on finding just the right words. But that’s not a problem. A few days – or weeks – really isn’t that much of a commitment. It sounds like a lot, to those who don’t write poetry. But trust me. Finding the perfect words in just under two weeks is easy.

But stories and novels take a lot longer than that. Months. Sometimes years. A year for me is a weighty commitment. Hell, most of the time, I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow, let alone three months from now.

So sitting down and starting a project that will be 50,000 to 150,000 words is really quite a task.

But I want to write. I really do.

I just have to find that story that will hold my interest for the year that it takes to write it. Of course, if it holds my interest, I’m betting it will hold yours.

Meantime, I’ll keep my day job. It’s a sucky place to work, and I hope one day to be free. But for that, I have to write.